Hot on the heels of the game's announcement for inclusion in the Super NES Classic Edition, we've dedicated an entire episode to Squaresoft's multiplayer action RPG Secret of Mana. Nah, just kidding. We recorded this a few weeks before Nintendo announced its new mini-system. That turned out to be a happy coincidence; in point of fact, this episode came about because Square Enix was just about to release a Switch collection of Mana games — Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, and Seiken Densetsu 3 — for Japanese audiences. The Super NES mini connection works out as a happy bonus.

Our original intention had been to cover the entirety of the Mana franchise with this episode, but as increasingly happens these days, we realized during the planning process that we have more than enough to say about one or two of the games that we could afford to downshift into low gear and go into greater, more specific depth. There's always the prospect of future Mana episodes to round out the rest...

So, this week, Chris Kohler joins me and Bob as we look at the first two Mana games (FF Adventure and Secret). We'll hit Seiken 3 and Legend of Mana and all the rest in due time. For now, the conversation centers on why you should be excited for Secret of Mana when it comes to the Super NES mini (just pretend in your mind that anytime we say "Switch collection" we're actually saying "Super NES mini"). It's a fine game.

Episode description: Jeremy, Bob, and Chris hunker down to discuss the entirety of Square Enix's Mana series but only make it through the first two games: Final Fantasy Adventure for Game Boy and Secret of Mana for SNES. (Whoops, we accidentally went extremely in-depth.)